Exposing The Myth: Tag Team Wrestling Doesn’t Draw Money
2. The Merchandise Numbers
Over in WWE, the New Day has maintained huge merchandise numbers for the past several years. Putting out new t-shirts with as much frequency as prime John Cena, the power of positivity was being rewarded with the power of pennies - with Kofi Kingston, Xavier Woods, and Big E bringing in a major dose of additional income from merch sales.
Even though the New Day has been separated into Big E on SmackDown and Kofi and Woods on Raw, why do you think WWE didn't go all-in on a proper breakup of the group? That's simple: the New Day brand is money!
Without any company machine behind them - at least before AEW was founded - the Young Bucks proved that tag team success can be achieved on a ginormous scale. A prime example of that is how over 100,000 Young Bucks t-shirts were sold in just a matter of weeks after going on sale in Hot Topic.
That's not the Bullet Club, that's not the Elite, that's solely the Young Bucks and solely one shirt design - and that's solely in one store chain.
It's numbers like this that make you realise why Nick and Matt Jackson were in no particular rush to run into the arms of WWE when Vince McMahon's sports entertainment juggernaut came a-calling. Instead, the Bucks knew their worth and were backed up by dollars and cents to prove it.